It's Beginning to Look a lot like Christmas. Christ.

Okay, so we've all got to steel ourselves for the inevitable. The decorations are already up in the malls, there are christmas cards lining the walls of shops and apparently some shops are already playing christmas carols. Since july, there have been people buying christmas presents (the lazy ones that is, the organised people buy their christmas presents in the january sales) and people have been sending presents and cards to their relatives since september. We've been getting christmas cracker requests since august and there are still 35 days until the big day. 


All of this is a preamble to the soul destroying conclusion that it's beginning to look a lot like christmas. Soul destroying you ask? Why? Surely christmas is a time of happiness, of presents and peace and goodwill to all on earth.


Yeah, except people who work in shops.


This will be my fourth christmas working in a shop and it gets worse every year. It's hot and stuffy all day, people are grumpy because it turns out that it isn't such a great idea to leave your shopping till 5.50pm on christmas eve, and maybe an even worse idea to be rude to the people who may or may not stay open five minutes longer so that you can find the perfect vacuous card to buy for sweetums. 


Also the long line of people going all the way down to the back of the shop probably IS a queue, they're probably not just standing there looking pissed off and sweaty holding mountain loads of plastic crap for their own amusement. My point being, don't get shirty with me when I tell you that there's a line. 


And yes I know it's annoying that you're one cracker off the number you need and we've sold out of the kind you've already bought, but I didn't make people buy the rest of them on purpose. Be a good host and go without.


If you want to make my christmas better, try to obey the basic rules of retail, which state that we're not going to refund you any money if you don't have a receipt, and certainly not if you have the receipt but left the product on the bus. Also we can tell when the disc of a dvd has been mauled by a pet or a child and we know you didn't buy it like that. 


If you complain about a lack of christmas music three weeks out from christmas, we will hate you for the rest of our lives and believe me we will outlive you, just so we can dance on your grave. 


This may sound like a whole lot of bitching which is a staggering overreaction to annoying customers. But at christmas time the gloves are off. It's personal. Christmas is like hell on earth for shop workers. The music, the noise, the endless stock shipments, the scrappy customers, the queue wars, the whole hellish despicable business. If you're rude to a shop worker at christmas, it's ten times worse than usual. So just don't. Please. It's christmas.


Peace and goodwill to all men and women of retail.